Why the Doctor Hates Christmas
by Carlisle Cooperative
Summary: The Doctor ponders why it is he dislikes Christmas so much. Written after viewing The Runaway Bride, when we noticed that very bad things always seem to happen whenever the Doctor visits earth over Christmas.


It's the commercialism of it. Not that I've anything against shopping. I believe that shopping can be a thoroughly healthy activity. A good shop has impressive restorative powers. For some people. I mean, not me-- i _other /i _ people.

Anyway, it's not the act of Christmas shopping, although that can be utter madness rivaling the stampede of the T'yfng on Rwatgroou every Gyef. And the stampede of the T'yfng is quite something. I mean, the Rwatgroouans try to tell you it's organized, and they have everything under control, and oh, sure, it's all fun and games until somebody gets liquidized by some stray T'yfng powder and then all hell breaks loose, doesn't it? But do they stop provoking the T'yfng to stampede every Gyef? No. They're bloody stubborn, those Rwatgroouans. I haven't figured out the genetic link between Rwatgroouans and humans quite yet, but I know it's got to be there. Maybe I'll finally get around to doing that. Lots of time on my hands after all.

Always an abundance of time.

Until there abruptly isn't any more time, without any warning, rather like the sudden appearance of T'yfng powder, only you don't end up liquidized at the end, you end up, well, just as you were before, only worse. Meaning _not_ liquidized, still all in one merry piece, but everything's empty and quiet and I'm off the topic, aren't I?

Christmas shopping is not as dangerous as the T'yfng stampede. It's simply good sport. Good for the blood. Like a good ghost story, is Christmas shopping. And I've never really minded Christmas shopping. I don't understand the bargain-hunting nature of it. Jackie used to be all about bargain-hunting. World champion at it. And I once watched Rose bargain a Cheg Lerrrrin down at the bazaar on Fejh, and she was not happy when I said she looked just like her mother. But I am not a bargain-hunter. Money in all forms is simply not something I'm interested in learning about.

But Christmas i _shopping /i _ is not the problem with Christmas. And it isn't the decorations, either. I happen to love the decorations. What's wrong with some coloured faerie lights? Some tinsel? Mistletoe! There's another utterly brilliant human creation! Mistletoe! I mean, of course, when it's not being used to frighten lupine wavelength haemovariforms. Although mistletoe is fun then, too, but it's far more fun when it's hung over a doorway and you have to kiss people under it. Mistletoe is one of the many reasons I keep coming back to Earth. Not that I hang out under mistletoe hoping for a snog. I've only done that once, and that was a unique situation. I just think that mistletoe is fun. It's fun and frivolous, has no purpose and makes no sense, and humans do it, for no practical reason, just because they're humans; they make up these silly little traditions that mean nothing, really, except to them. Daft little traditions that they all take so seriously. Refuse to kiss someone under mistletoe and see what happens. It's bloody terrifying. Although it could be it was so terrifying because it was Jackie I was refusing to kiss under the mistletoe. Let's not talk about that incident. Sill makes me shudder.

Even so, the thing that I hate about Christmas is not the mistletoe, or the shopping, or the decorations. It's not the way the season is so busy, the way humans wring every ounce of life out of the month of December. Those tiny life spans, they ought to live every month that way, never stopping, no pause for breath, just party to party, event to event, with some saving of the universe in between, for good measure. It isn't the colder weather. I happen to like having to wear layers. And snow is brilliant! Snowballs and snow angels and snow forts and snowmen and catching snowflakes on one's tongue (as long as you have first ascertained they are genuine snowflakes and not ash and not poisonous). It isn't the music. It isn't those ridiculous paper crowns they make you wear on your head. I actually love all of that.

No, when I say I hate Christmas because of the commercialism, I mean that I hate the fact that everyone seems to have forgotten. Peace on Earth, good will toward men. That is what Christmas means. Why can't anyone remember that? Everyone understands that, across the universe. Every civilization has a Christmas, a pause in the endless squabbles of races and species. But everyone's started deciding that Christmas shouldn't be a day that's different from the rest. There is no lull. There is no respect for peace and good will. Not that there often is when I'm around, so I suppose that shouldn't surprise me. And maybe it's me. Maybe I'm ruining Christmases on Earth by going there all the time. Maybe if I stopped, if I stayed away, there would be no more alien invasions and I wouldn't have to lose my temper and behave in un-peaceful and un-good-will-like ways. I should just stay away from Christmas.

But the thing is that it was Christmas when I—

Because, you see, I used to like Christmas. I used to _love _Christmas. And it was all going badly. The War, the… Everything was going badly. If ever I needed a bit of peace on Earth, a bit of good will toward men… Because by then I'd figured it out. I'd figured it out long before, of course, but I hadn't believed it would actually come to that until… Or maybe that's not accurate. You asked for honesty, right? Here it is. Maybe I didn't think that I'd actually do it. Maybe I didn't think I had it in me. Maybe I didn't i _want /i _ to have it in me. Maybe, just maybe, I was tired of being the Doctor. Of i _having /i _ to be the Doctor. Of knowing what it was that had to be done, and knowing that they expected me to do it because I'd never given any of them any reason to believe that I wouldn't do it, it was all so very in keeping with the tragic-hero sort of character they'd all decided, long ago, that I'd wanted for myself. But I i _hadn't /i _ wanted that. I really didn't want anything that—

I wanted Christmas. I wanted some peace and some good will. So I came to Earth, at Christmastime. I wandered through Christmas. All of it—the blinking lights and the bustle of the crowds and the musicians playing slightly off-key Christmas carols and the smell of fresh pine—and was I happy? No. Could I forget? No. Rose seemed to think I had some special capacity for forgetting. No, I have a special capacity for remembering. I even played Father Christmas on that trip. I soniced money and scattered it to random individuals as they passed me in the streets. When I heard children asking for gifts, saw the parent give that regretful "we'll see" that parents give when they come to grips with being unable to give their children everything in the world, I would track down the gifts myself and leave them outside the children's flats: dolls that walked and talked, cars that raced over the streets with remote controls, and red bicycles. But did I feel better? No. Did I forget? No.

Because by then I had known I would do it. Because by then I had known how it would end. And it was a mistake to go to Christmas, to taint the holiday with the heaviness of that. I went straight from watching Rose with her red bicycle to… Not that I had known it was Rose at the time. It wasn't until later, so much later, after everything had ended and yet not ended, that I realized who I'd given the red bicycle to.

So maybe it is not all Christmas's fault that I hate it. Maybe it's mostly my fault for getting it all confused and muddled and mixed up with the rest of my existence. Fine. It i _is /i _ my fault. And when Rose wanted to go home… When i _Rose /i _ wanted to go home… When you have lived 19 years and you embrace death just to save one—When you are 19 and you damn all the consequences and you make such a silly, stupid sacrifice and I have never been so terrified as when the TARDIS appeared and Rose walked out glowing with Time Vortex and calling me her Doctor and the thing is that I'd never been so terrified but it was also the first time in a very long time that I could remember what Christmas felt like. Because that special capacity for remembering can be so cruelly selective. But it was Christmas—the Christmas before everything-- that I suddenly remembered when Rose came back. It was all of the best and grandest Christmases rolled into one utterly perfect moment.

And then what did Rose say, when my hearts were still beating triple-time from the terror for her life and the regeneration of my life and the general euphoria of being with Rose, alive, together? What did she say? Well, maybe she didn't ask to go home. Maybe not in so many words. But she didn't ask to stay either. She didn't tell me not to do it when I set the course for Earth. And I set it for Christmas. Why? Because I associated that bitterness and disappointment, that anticipation of loneliness, entirely with Christmas.

Maybe there was a chance to break that association. Because Rose didn't leave me, after all. We stood in the snow (and that _was_ ash, so no snowflake-catching-on-tongue) and held hands and she asked me where we would go next, just like always. It was a lovely Christmas. Quite the loveliest Christmas I'd ever had, really.

But, see, that's the thing with Christmas, isn't it? Christmas makes you hope. Christmas always makes you bloody i _hope /i _. That's unfair. Life is so much easier if you can just stop hoping, but Christmas doesn't let you. It's some powerful sort of…sort of… It's like a recipe, right? Humans have figured out the recipe for hope, and it's some sort of mixture of carols and cookies and tinsel. Whatever it is, it works. It works every single, bloody time. I stood in the snow with Rose and I hoped. The first of many Christmases, I thought. I'd bring her back every Christmas. Jackie would dry out the turkey and over-sugar my tea. We'd even do conventional things like open Christmas gifts under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning instead of spending Christmas morning fighting aliens on spaceships over London. I didn't know how many of those Christmases there would be, but I was so bloody convinced that there would be at least one.

But no. The next time I was on Earth for Christmas, Rose was gone. And, once again, there was no peace on Earth, good will toward men. No, no, that time I had to kill yet another alien race. That is apparently what I do on Christmas. Some people bake gingerbread men. I commit genocide. It's a tradition.

There. You asked. That's the answer.

That's why I hate Christmas.


End file.
